There are four known fundamental forces which control matter and energy; namely: strong nuclear forces, weak nuclear forces, electromagnetic force, and gravitational force. In the 1970s, physicists realized that there are very close ties between two of the four fundamental forces—the weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force. The two forces can be described within the same theory, which forms the basis of the Standard Model. This “unification” implies that electricity, magnetism, light and some types of radioactivity are all manifestations of a single underlying force, known as the electroweak force.
The basic equations of the unified theory correctly describe the electroweak force and its associated force-carrying particles, namely the photon, and the W and Z bosons, except for one issue: all of these particles emerge from the equations without a mass. While this is true for the photon, we know that the W and Z bosons have mass, nearly 100 times that of a proton. The answer to this issue is the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism, proposed by the theorists Robert Brout, Francois Englert and Peter Higgs. This mechanism gives a mass to the W and Z bosons when they interact with an invisible field, called the “Higgs field”, which pervades the universe. Immediately after the big bang, the Higgs field was zero, but as the universe cooled and the temperature fell below a critical value, the field grew spontaneously so that any particle interacting with it acquired a mass. The more a particle interacts with the Higgs field, the heavier it becomes. Particles like the photon that do not interact with the Higgs field are left with no mass at all. Like all fundamental fields, the Higgs field has an associated particle the Higgs boson.
For years, scientists unsuccessfully attempted experiments to observe the Higgs boson in order to confirm the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism. Then a breakthrough occurred on Jul. 4, 2012, when the ATLAS and Compact Muon Solenoid (“CMS”) experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (“LHC”) announced they had each observed a new particle in the mass region of approximately 125 GeV. While the observations of the new particle are consistent with the Higgs boson, it will take further work to determine whether or not it is the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. The Higgs boson, as proposed within the Standard Model, is the simplest manifestation of the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism.
The CMS and ATLAS detectors are used to investigate a wide range of physics, from the search for the Higgs boson to extra dimensions and particles that could make up dark matter. On 8 Oct. 2013 the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded jointly to Franøois Englert and Peter Higgs for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's LHC. (The above excerpts were obtained from an article entitled “The Higgs Boson”, published on the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) website at https://home.cern/science/physics/higgs-boson; last accessed on Feb. 12, 2020).
NASA's Gravity Probe B (“GP-B”) mission has confirmed two key predictions derived from Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which the GP-B spacecraft was designed to test. The experiment, launched in 2004 and decommissioned in 2010, used four ultra-precise gyroscopes to measure the hypothesized geodetic effect (the warping of space and time around a gravitational body), and frame-dragging (the amount a spinning object pulls space and time with it as it rotates). The GP-B determined both effects with unprecedented precision by pointing at a single star, IM Pegasi, while in a polar orbit around Earth. If gravity did not affect space and time, GP-B's gyroscopes would point in the same direction forever while in orbit. However, in confirmation of Einstein's theories, the gyroscopes experienced measurable, minute changes in the direction of their spin, while Earth's gravity pulled at them. (The above excerpts obtained from a NASA news release no. 11-134, dated May 3, 2011 and published on NASA's website at https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/may/HQ_11-134_Gravity_Probe_B.html; last accessed on Feb. 12, 2020).
A black hole is an astronomical object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it. A black hole's “surface,” called its event horizon, defines the boundary where the velocity needed to escape exceeds the speed of light, which is the speed limit of the cosmos. Matter and radiation fall in, but they can't get out.
Two main classes of black holes have been extensively observed. Stellar-mass black holes with three to dozens of times the Sun's mass are spread throughout our Milky Way galaxy, while supermassive monsters weighing 100,000 to billions of solar masses are found in the centers of most big galaxies. A stellar-mass black hole forms when a star with more than 20 solar masses exhausts the nuclear fuel in its core and collapses under its own weight. The collapse triggers a supernova explosion that blows off the star's outer layers. But if the crushed core contains more than about three times the Sun's mass, no known force can stop its collapse to a black hole. Once born, black holes can grow by accreting matter that falls into them, including gas stripped from neighboring stars and even other black holes.
It has been observed by Albert Einstein that time travels slower the faster an observer travels. This is referred to as time dilation, or gravitational time dilation. This phenomenon is also seen in black holes where the flux (accretion disk) separates out and is compressed into almost a disc where, in the poles, time moves the slowest.
A black hole may be visualized slowing down time and storing all that energy but just before a mass hits the center or the zero point (event horizon) and everything disappears, imagine there is a transfer. Instead of losing the energy in the poles, the transfer breaks the gravitational ties and releases all that energy back into the present timeline.
Energy exists in two states; it's either being stored in time or released.